Making Sense of the Paradoxes

The nuances revealed by Collier's work explain two things in the news that at first seemed contradictory. First, why has there been a mixed reaction to the uprising in highland communities? Why were rebel prisoners beaten by townspeople in Ocosingo, while other local civilians expressed support for the guerrillas? This ceases to be a paradox once we grasp the non-homogeneity of these villages. Although all seem poor to the outside observer, there are in fact townspeople who are wealthy by local standards, who have hitched their fate to the dominant political party, and who thus have much to lose in an uprising which surely is at least in part against them.

The second apparent contradiction is found in the rhetoric used by the Zapatistas in their pronouncements. If this is an ethnic rebellion, and indeed the vast majority of the fighters barely speak Spanish, why do their press releases contain no statements of ethnic nationalism? Rather than rejecting the legitimacy of the Ladino Mexican state, they use the constitution to justify their actions. Their Declaration of the Jungle contains the following language, reminiscent of the U.S. Declaration of Independence:

We call upon Article 39 of the Mexican Constitution which states ”the people have at all times the inalienable right to alter or change the nature of their government.”

Therefore, in accordance with our Constitution, we issue this DECLARATION OF WAR... People of Mexico, we call for your total participation in this struggle for work, land, housing, food, health care, education independence, liberty, democracy, justice and peace.

This is no declaration of ethnic warfare. It is strikingly different from the words used by the Shining Path in Peru or the Bosnian Serbs.

In fact, taken as a whole, the various press releases of the Zapatistas paint a picture of an uprising of the poor, regardless of ethnicity, calling for basic human rights. It is likely that the mixing in of Spanish speaking peasants in the Lacandon settlements contributed to the inclusionary, rather than exclusionary, nature of their rhetoric.

The broad appeal of the Zapatista message has led to a degree of David vs. Goliath [slingshots and stones?] sympathy among the general population of Mexico, provoking large solidarity marches. And it has thrust the very nature of the neo-liberal economic model of the Salinas administration onto the national agenda for discussion, as urban elites wake up to the reality that there are now two Mexicos: the yuppie Mexico in the capital and Northern cities that has fed upon market liberalization and NAFTA-related investment, and the ever larger and ever more marginalized poor Mexico. The easy transition that President Salinas expected to his hand-picked successor suddenly doesn't look so easy. He has already had to make concessions on electoral reform that were unthinkable even last year, and topics that were taboo, such as the role of the military in Mexican society, are now openly debated. It would appear that the Zapatistas have let the genie of popular inconformity out of the bottle, and it remains to be seen if Salinas and the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) will be able to get it back in.

Outlines of an Alternative

What sort of changes would be necessary to provide a decent life to the indigenous people of Chiapas and poor peasants throughout Mexico? Is peasant farming an anachronism that must disappear if we are to eliminate rural poverty?

At Food First we believe that these questions are linked, and that in answering with a qualified no to the second we can approach a response to the first. As social relations and land tenure are currently configured in Chiapas, and indeed across Mexico, peasant agriculture is not viable. But that is not an intrinsic characteristic, but rather the product of trade policies and land concentration.

What is needed is both a new land distribution program and a favorable macroeconomic environment. Mayan communities must be given communal ejido holdings in fertile lowland areas, with guarantees of secure tenure. This is not so far-fetched as it seems, as previous Mexican land reforms have given some villages limited access to quality lowland farmland which they work on a seasonal basis. Fair credit must be made available too and crop prices should be supported sufficiently to allow for a sustainable livelihood, much as is done in Japan, Taiwan and elsewhere. This is best achieved through barriers to cheap imports rather than subsidies, thereby avoiding deficit spending.

Finally corrupt local authorities linked to the PRI must be thrown out, as has been demanded in the many peasant takeovers of towns that have taken place since the start of the Zapatista uprising. Of course these changes would require democratization, some rollback of NAFTA and the restoration of Article 27 of the constitution, but these are just the sort of issues that the Zapatistas have thrust into the national debate in Mexico.